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==== ====for quality backlinks tool check this out:http://www.clickbankwarehouse.com/recommends/bookmarklovers==== ====What is a Backlink?Whats all this hoopla over backlinks? Every SEO forum and blog you stop by is constantly toutingthe power and necessity of backlinks they must be a pretty big deal! So what exactly is a backlink?Simply put, a backlink is a link on another website (external) that leads to a page on your website.For instance, a link on this page to a page on another website would be a backlink for THATwebpage.How do Backlinks Help us Rank?Think of it like this: backlinks are human citation. In a sense, we decide what pages we, as internetusers, want to show up in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) by linking to the content welike. A page with more links of a higher quality than others will rank higher. The part about qualityis really important. Its not just about who has the most backlinks its about where those links arefrom.If you were trying to lose weight, would you be more inclined to trust the opinion of some JoeShmo or from a professional health expert? This principle is applied to backlinks and the way theyaffect our rankings. Links from sites that are established as authorities (like the health expert)carry much more weight than a link from someone commenting in a fitness forum somewhere.Google weighs out these links and their value using their complex algorithm and uses this data todecide how to rank your website/webpage. Your site does not have to be a monster authority siteto rank highly. Rather, you can rank highly by getting high quality backlinks from other authoritysites.Lets pretend that the health expert from earlier told us that Joe Shmo actually made some goodpoints and his opinions are quite valid. Wouldnt we start to trust Joe Shmo more and see morevalue in his opinion? Similarly, if an authority health site linked to Joe Shmos small niche site,Google would realize that maybe Joes site is more authoritative then they realized, and theywould rank it higher. The web is not controlled by computers. It is run by people, and this isreflected in the way we act and link online. Search Engines know this and respond accordingly totry to give us the results that we demand and construct ourselves.How do we get Backlinks?Now that we know the importance of backlinks and why they affect our rankings the way they do,we need to figure out how we can get some. A full answer to this question might take somehundreds of pages, so were going to take a broad view of some backlinking strategies to get agood idea of how to get quality backlinks.

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Sadly, backlinking isnt as simple or straight forward as our health expert example above. Yourenot so likely to be granted a link from some powerful authority such as CNN or Apple just forcreating great content. Our techniques are going to have to be a little more guerrilla-esque. Thisisnt to say that the quality of your content doesnt matter, its quite the opposite. At the core ofyour promotion and backlinking strategy should be great, quality content. Well assume youalready know how to make great content and get on with the backlinking.There are many different ways to get backlinks and each of the methods takes time to learn andmaster. Rather than getting super-in-depth with any single backlinking strategy, Im going toprovide you with a list of ways to get backlinks. We are going to continue this SEO course bycovering the governing principles of backlinks and how to measure their quality - knowledge youcan apply to every single backlinking method successfully. Heres a comprehensive list of ways toget backlinks:Free blogs (blogger, wordpress, squidoo)Profile backlinksBlog commentingArticle MarketingPress releasesSocial BookmarksWebsite directoriesBlog CarnivalsVideo marketingForum CommentingDocument DistributorsPodcast DirectoriesSoftware DistributorsEach of these methods can be deeply explored to achieve the best results. For this SEO Course,we are instead going to cover the factors that make a great backlink.Anchor TextAnchor text is the clickable text in a hyper-link. For example, if you look at the links in the resourcebox for this article, one of them has the anchor text "SEO Course" while the other simply has my

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websites URL as the anchor text.Anchor text is very powerful and has a big impact on how effective a backlink is. Anchor text givessearch engines a quick glimpse of what the page on the other side is going to be about, so youwant to use your keyword and other keyword variations as often as you can. Google and otherSEs look at the text closest to a link to decide what its about, and in essence, your anchor text istechnically the closest text to the link (it IS the link!). You wont always have the option to useanchor text, but dont give up an opportunity when one presents itself.RelevanceRelevance is another factor that decides how effective a backlink is. Relevance really is the nameof the game when it comes to ranking in the search engines. Google says over and over again,their goal is to provide the most relevant search results. This means having relevant content andhaving relevant backlinks pointing to your content. A relevant backlink appears to be very relatableto your keyword. The same factors that make any page relevant to a keyword are the factors thatwould make a backlink relevant to your keyword. For instance, an article with a good keyworddensity for your keyword and your keyword in your anchor text would be pretty relevant. Toincrease the relevance of any backlink you can use proper anchor text, surround the link withrelevant text, and use a relevant title if possible.PageRankThe effect of PageRank on you rankings is often completely overrated. The honest truth is that PRis NOT that important in how well you rank for your keyword. It is but one of over 200 factors thataffect your ranking and its value is often exaggerated. Its always better to get backlinks from highPR pages when you can, but dont place too much importance on it.One really obvious misconception is that if the home page of a site has a high PR, then any pageyou get a link from on that domain is going to pass a lot of PageRank. For example, people whosell link packets sometimes tout how they have high PR forums you can get links from. Thisdoesnt make any sense at all because your link is not going to be on the home page. It is calledPAGE Rank, not SiteRank - its right in the name! If you create a profile link on any forum, itsgoing to be on your new profile page with a PR 0. Getting links from High PageRank pages (pages- not sites) is great and definitely helpful, but its not the holy grail to ranking.Nofollow Vs. "Dofollow"Another factor that affects links is whether or not they have the nofollow link element applied tothem. The nofollow link attribute was created to tell Google to ignore certain links. In essencethese would be links to sites that you arent completely comfortable linking out to. Google statesthat the nofollow tag should be used for links that are paid or lead to untrusted content. Also, theyare a little vague about how they crawl nofollow links. They say that they generally do not, but theydo sometimes:/ (I know right?) So what does this mean for our backlinking?Google states very clearly that nofollow links do NOT pass anchor text or PR. Matt Cutts, Googlesoutspoken web spam engineer, has also said plainly that there is no SEO benefit in a nofollow link.He might have said that in an effort to slow down people spamming sites/pages with nofollow

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links, or he might have been completely truthful. We cant really tell, so Ill let you be the judge.So do we care or not if a backlink is nofollow? Heres a logical way to decide which links will beworth your time:When blog commenting, if you come across a blog, and all the comments are "nofollowed" askyourself this: Will I get traffic from this link? If the answer is yes then post a comment, if not, youmight want to just move on. Dont forget - the whole point of doing SEO is to get targeted traffic, sowhy would you ever turn down targeted traffic just because a link is nofollow? I will still leavecomments on blogs that use nofollow on comment links, but only if there are signs of decent trafficon the blog.Indexing Our LinksThe last thing you need to know about backlinks is that they need to get indexed. Search engineswont give you credit for a link they dont know exists. You need to get one of their spiders/bots tothe page with your backlink on it so that they crawl your link and find that it leads to your site.There are two easy (and FREE) ways to go about getting your links indexed.1) Social BookmarkingSocial bookmarking sites get crawled constantly by the search engines. When you post abookmark on one, youre link will likely be crawled in a matter of hours. It really is that easy. Ofcourse, you can never guarantee anything that Google or other search engines will do, but yourelink/page is more than likely to be indexed in a relatively short period of time with just a bookmarkor two.2) PingingThe actual technical process of pinging isnt important to us. Put simply, pinging notifies the searchengines that you have new content, and in response, they crawl that new content. This is anotherfast and effective way to get your backlinks indexed. There are a number of good, free pingingservices, but the one I use most is pingomatic.comSEO Course ConclusionBacklinks are essential to getting the top rankings that you desire. They give your site authorityand relevance in the eyes of the search engines. Backlinking doesnt have to be a dry, tediousprocess, nor does it need to be confusing and complicated.If you follow all of the above guidelines in this free SEO Course, you should have no problemgetting the high quality backlinks from any backlinking strategy or source that will get your site tospot #1. Ben Jackson is a Search Engine Optimization expert and founder ofwww.seodiscovery.org.